Cattle Decapitation & Shadow Of Intent: The Terrasitic Reconquest Tour 2025 – New Century Hall, Manchester; 1st February 2025.

Cattle Decapitation & Shadow Of Intent: The Terrasitic Reconquest Tour 2025 at New Century Hall Manchester was tonights adventure and let me tell you this. What an evening. New Century Hall Manchester located 34 Hanover St, Manchester is a venue that I’ve not actually visited up until tonight and I have to say it’s an absolutely beautiful venue from it’s general aesthetic to the atmosphere the venue seemed to hold I had not negative feedback to give and also I’d like to add in addition to this the lighting quality of this venue is absolutely superb and may I even say it – a photographers dream (Now it could have been just a good night but I would love to photograph at this venue again to see if it was just a case of good luck).

The Terrasitic Reconquest Tour 2025 consisted of a line up of Cattle Decapitation, Shadow Of Intent, Revocation and Vulvodynia. The tour kicked off in Nuremberg on the 23rd January and has been making its way through various venues across Europe since.

Opening for the evening were South African deathcore band Vulvodynia. Vulvodynia are a band of which I have seen now previously on the 13th December on the seasons beating tour with Ingested, Malice and Pintglass (If you haven’t read our article on this, you can find this >> HERE <<) and now today on the Terrasitic Reconquest Tour. Tonight’s performance was just as good if not better than my previous experience with Vulvodynia.

Known intense and brutal style of music they definitely delivered tonight with perfect execution of slamming breakdowns, gutturals that could shake you to your core and aggression in their performance that just hits that sweet spot. Fun trivia fact for you, I did not know that Vulvodynia’s Lwandile Prusent (ex-guitarist and current vocalist) and Kris Xenopoulos (guitarist) were also part of XavlegbmaofffassssitimiwoamndutroabcwapwaeiippohfffX (also known by the full name of ‘Acidic Vaginal Liquid Explosion Generated by Mass Amounts of Filthy Fecal Fisting and Sadistic Septic Syphilic Sodomy Inside the Infected Maggot Infested Womb of a Molested Nun Dying Under the Roof of a Burning Church While a Priest Watches and Ejaculates in Immense Perverse Pleasure Over His First Fresh Fetus‘). You learn something new every day.

Following on from this solid performance was the more thrash-leaning deathcore fused band Revocation. Now, this is such a weird one for me – having checked them out on Spotify (Hey Spotify, I’m mentioning you again – where is my sponsor?) I feel I was slightly misled by their performance.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked it and the whole set was flawless however I felt that on recordings they come across as a bit more deathcore leaning than thrash-y (this makes sense in my head I promise). For anyone who has read my articles or reviews on music, I’m not a major thrash fan, I can appreciate it as a genre and the influence it had on the music industry,y and a lot of bands may full well not have been here if not for the genre HOWEVER there was just something about this set which for me on a personal level didn’t sit right and didn’t align with the expectations I had in my head and what I ‘thought’ I would be subjected too. Would I see them again? Sure, Yes. Did the crowd love it? Yes, they did.

Now here we go… time for my fan-girling to come out and for me to start a 1,000-word essay on this next band and reasons I absolutely adore them Shadow Of Intent. I am so fucking happy that I’ve managed to finally get to one of their shows, so fucking happy. With tracks so brutal you want to punch your nan (Seriously, I need to find a new comparison to heavy music and punching family members especially older relatives) they were a spectacle to watch.

It still amazes me to this day the vocals that come out of Ben Duerr’s mouth both with his vocal range and technical skills if you’re going off a judgment of how someone looks you would not expect these noises to be leaving his body with him looking so innocent and ‘young’. The band’s performance for the evening was tight and I’m so happy with the fact that this was the bar set for my first live performance of these guys. I would happily go and see them again if they ever played local to myself, this would be without hesitation and honestly in my opinion for the evening Shadow Of Intent was the main band that stood out to me. I would highly recommend to anyone reading this if you get the opportunity to either catch them on the rest of this tour or alternatively catch them at a show near you, please – do it. During their set, they performed their newest single, ‘Flying The Black Flag’  which I do have to give commendation to with this being an absolute beast of a release.

 

 

Closing the evening was the American deathgrind band Cattle Decapitation. Hailing from San Diego, California, and being in formation since 1996 they are a band that has remained strong on the scene. I do remember when I was ‘younger’ blasting some Cattle Decapitation on my myspace page for my ‘profile song’.

Now during this set, there is one moment that as a photographer and as someone who views music I don’t know whether to be sick about or to say I enjoyed it and pass it off as a new kink unlocked.. but I have never seen a band with a vocalist who hacks up so much phlegm and snot whilst performing and openly ejects that shit forward. I hear you saying Laura just get on with it, what are you trying to say… I’m trying to say that during this set there were a couple of times where Travis Ryan snotted and spat out and I was in a nice firing range of this. Was it intentional to hit photographers/security with this? Definitely not, well at least I should hope not but at the same time it was mildly disgusting. I did on a funny note manage to catch a few of these moments on recording and looking back I can kind of laugh but just a note to any photographers who may be doing the rest of the show. Musically Cattle Decapitation showed the audience why still remain titans in their genre category and displayed both technical and brutality to their music that you’d expect no less than from the guys.

 

Overall, it was a great show with a solid lineup that I felt brought both variety and depth to the Terrasitic Reconquest Tour whilst showcasing even though the bands performing on this tour are under the umbrella of “deathcore/death metal” that there are so many variants within this genre. I would honestly say if you like brutal, hard-hitting heavy music then this is definitely a show you do not want to miss out on.